#and i've been really into arthuriana

[lit-in-thy-heart]

i respect one (1) knight in le morte darthur and that knight is sir dinadan

[morrigan-reads]

gosh i love getting into arthuriana (and medievalism in general.) it's just becoming obsessed with a new obscure manuscript containing a unique form of a work, finding out it isn't digitised or available in facsimile anywhere, then moving on to the next one.

what bliss.

[mortiscausa]

ngl i find it kind of wierd when people tag my arthurian stuff as fanart because i really do not think about it that way at all haha

[taliesin-the-bored]

Tag game: tag nine people you’d like to know better.

Tagged by: @oneshoulderangel (Thank you for tagging me!)

Last song: At the moment, I have "Losing Your Memory" by Alan Star stuck in my head, which I suppose makes it my current song, not my last song. Hm. I get songs stuck in my head very easily, but the last one I had there for a significant amount of time was a mashup of different language versions of "Les Rois du Monde" for about a week. "Lehetsz Király", the Magyar version, is probably my favorite of them. It's worth a listen.

Currently watching: Normally, the answer would be "random mostly terrible old movies/shows" or "nothing much", but I currently have a hyperfixation on the musical Roméo et Juliette and have been watching it in multiple languages. (Thus, the song).

Three ships: This is hard. Maybe as a result of being on the ace and aro spectrums, I'm more likely to care about which characters are interacting than whether it's romantic or platonic. Here goes:

Kedivere/Bedikay. It can be romantic, platonic, or queerplatonic, but whichever way, I'm here for it. I probably spend too much time thinking about how in Cullwch and Olwen, when Cai gets mad at Arthur and marches out, Bedwyr stays behind, keeps acting like nothing's happened, and isn't the one to avenge Cai's death. The feeling of betrayal on both sides has a lot of unexplored potential. And the version where Bedivere dies and Kay fights to bring his body back safely while mortally wounded himself... And the version where Bedivere survives Camlann and Kay isn't said to fight in it, so they might be left together after their world has fallen apart...

Platonically or queerplatonically, Galahad and the Grail Heroine. I really like the tragic Grail Quest friendships, but I like theirs most, maybe because there's something weird and otherworldly about them both. I like it when characters are strange and endearing and doomed by the narrative.

Ever since reading John Matthews' retelling, which I read before the original, I've had a soft spot for Caradoc and Guinier. The Story of Caradoc is very disturbing, and I have some major qualms with Caradoc over a detail Matthews cut out, but all the same, there's a reason these two have the best track record with magical fidelity tests. Each of them would go to the ends of the earth for the other, and together, they're stronger than any curse.

Favorite Color: Blue, particularly royal blue and some teals.

Currently consuming: Black licorice with chocolate.

First ship: This is a hard one, since through elementary and most of middle school, I tended to go along with whatever I thought the author's intentions were and was more likely to unship something. The first non-endgame ship I got invested in was Sonya/Nikolai in War and Peace. I didn't like Nikolai, but Sonya did, and she was my favorite character, so I wanted her to be happy. The first non-canon couple I thought was meant to be together was also in War and Peace: Marya Bolkonskaya and Julie Karagina. My eighth grade self did not think their letters could be interpreted platonically. I still don't.

Last movie: If the musical doesn't count, the last movie I watched was Quest for Camelot, which was awful. Though not Robot Monster-level bad, Robot Monster has an elegance to its simplicity which Quest for Camelot lacks.

Currently working on: Various fics, most of them Arthuriana or CotRK-related (I am woefully behind on the Badfic Bingo), and (theoretically) an epic-style poem, though I haven't gotten much of it written for quite a while now.

Tagging: @gawrkin, @emperorcandy, @wildbasil, @gorewound, @knightsofsomethingorother, @ladyminaofcamelot, @tasosotaso, @amashelle, @gingersnaptaff (I have no idea who's been tagged so far, apart from the people on @oneshoulderangel's post, so I apologize for any multi-tags)

[gawrkin]

I Believe it's now over a Year since I've joined Tumblr

First of All

THANK YOU so much to all My Followers and Mutuals!

I wish I could mention all my 99 followers, but I felt it was too unwieldy so I'll just settle for keeping it small:

Thank you very much to:

@cesarescabinet @sanddef @0rions-belt @fairyhagmother

@mistoffeleesisawitch @moirailsupport @taliesin-the-bored @dullyn

@gailyinthedark @enjoyerofstories @rainbluealoekitten @a-funeral-pyre

@agravaineoforkney @gingersnaptaff @sagewiththyme @emperorcandy @nukethebees

@jimmythejiver @oneshoulderangel @salomania @wandrenowle

@wildbasil @sickfreaksirkay @liminalpsych @neapolitangirl

And Shoutouts to:

@tiodolma @delphiniumpacificguinevere @the-king-and-the-druidess @thesquireinvictus

@adhd-merlin @joemerl @gellavonhamster

and many, many more!

With special thanks to:

@queer-ragnelle - who's Arthurian Preservation Project was the best resource that I was fortunate enough to discover. (You should go check it out HERE)

SO... a whole year has passed since I've joined Tumblr and wow, I didn't think I would come to love blogging here; I don't really engage with social media much at all, even now. But here, it's different. I first came to Tumblr because of my growing obsession with the Arthurian Tradition - something that had been growing for a long time since I was still in High school. Back then, I was also a freak for folklore and mythology. And having since come here, I think it's helped me a lot, both in my personal life and with my obsession with Arthuriana. The community here is wonderful and comfortable to talk about our little niche

With all that said, I thank you to all who've liked and reblogged my posts and, trust me I've got PLENTY MORE things to show and talk about King Arthur and his mythos.

So, I hope I can continue blogging about our favorite knights and ladies at Camelot for the forseeable future.

Finally, to cap off

I wish you all love, peace and happiness no matter what

[utilitycaster]

What are some of your favourite podcasts / podcast recs?

It's hard to pick a favorite though I will say at the moment Midst is the one I think I look forward to the most, so I'm just going to go through basically all podcasts I currently or relatively recently previously listened to and sort them by rough genre. Note that as with all recommendation requests it helps to know the vibe of what you're going for and what's important to you (I know I just was like hey I'll take most music recs but the commitment for music is like the length of a song, whereas podcasts/books/movies/tv are a bit more time put in)

Actual Play:

Longtime listener of NADDPod and TAZ which I'm guessing if you follow me you are broadly aware of but if not feel free to ask more; I also post about Worlds Beyond Number enough that you might know what it is. I checked out Burnt Cookbook party a while ago both because I liked Jenna Stoeber's work with Polygon and because someone asked me for Actual Play podcast-only recs with more than one woman or nb player that weren't RQG and I was like oh I should find some. Anyway it's quite good! it's definitely lower production values than bigger podcasts but the plot is highly original and really good, the vibes are fantastic, the characters are a lot of fun, and all in all worth checking out. I also do listen to the Re-Slayer's Take which I've really enjoyed! Everyone's good but while I was familiar with (and a fan of) Jasmine Bhullar and Jasper William Cartwright's work, Jasmine Chiong as Farah speaks to the Grouchy Old Hunter Woman fan in me and has been a personal standout. It is very heavily edited, which does take some getting used to. Also, I mentioned RQG (Rusty Quill Gaming). It comes with the caveat of "very good but slow to start and then doesn't really stick the landing, imo, though the epilogues help" but I can recommend with that warning.

Scripted Fiction

Camlann. Modern post-apocalyptic Arthuriana/Folklore of the British Isles, with some hints of other folklore as well. 1 season; hoping they get funding for a second because it was very well done and also I want Gwen and Morgan to kiss.

Midst. Hard to describe but if you follow me you've seen a lot of posts that might help. Extremely good! About to finish in a bit over a week's time! Check it out and I advice you check out the first 3 episodes at once to get a feel for it; the three-narrator thing is also "get used to it and it will be fine".

The Penumbra Podcast. Originally envisioned as an anthology podcast but then two specific settings (noir-y space opera and medieval court monster hunters) were very popular. Also nearing its end.

The Silt Verses. Quite literally everything on this list would be described as "New Weird" and "has queer characters" and this is maybe the New Weirdest. Anyway, set in a world where gods are real, require human sacrifice to live, and society is both very complicit and also uses the gods to sell shit. I think people who are mad about D20 or CR not being explicitly political enough should listen to it. Extremely good. Also in its endgame, but they've had a very drawn out schedule as of late.

Welcome to Night Vale. You are on Tumblr; presumably you know the drill. I can't say I'm like...super following what happens but it's one of those things that's been a constant in my life for over a decade and takes up a very pleasant hour-ish per month. This feels like damning with faint praise but the earlier stuff was great and it's still strong, it's just, you know, the inevitable slowness of an indefinitely long slice-of-life-ish show vs. the more plot-driven ones above.

Within the Wires. By one of the Night Vale Creators. I have a post about it but it's set on an alternate history Earth where a cataclysmic war/plague/various other bad things absolutely destroyed the population in the early 1900s, leading to a very different global society. Some people say the seasons are very uneven in quality. They are incorrect. The seasons follow different people and all are in the form of found audio, so they are all quite different, but it's entirely a matter of personal preference if you like a season or not; it's not that some are Objectively Better.

Wolf 359 finished a long time back and I haven't relistened since my original listen in like...2018, but of "podcasts that have finished" it's worth it. Weird space stuff.

Informative(?)

Home Cooking by Hrishikesh Hirway and Samin Nosrat; was a pandemic project that now only airs yearly, really, but worth checking out if you like cooking.

I found out about Home Cooking via Song Exploder, which is just Hrishikesh Hirway talking about songs. Great podcast; the editing is fascinating and I have found a lot of good music from it!

I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats. Has only two seasons but they are both very good if you like The Mountain Goats as a band.

No Such Thing as a Fish: the QI (British quiz show) (if you're British you know this better than I do) researches talk about weird facts and riff on them.

Sawbones: Justin McElroy and his wife Dr. Sydnee Smirl McElroy talk about weird medical history and dumb wellness trends on tiktok. This is one of the earliest podcasts I subscribed to back when I did not drive nearly as much.

The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green. Has also completed and there's a book that's basically covering the same ground. It's not like, purely informative; it's very anecdotal (as is I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats) but I learned a lot from it.

Honorable mention: I just didn't have the time or energy to keep up with Ologies by Alie Ward but what I listened to was fun and interesting and my sibling is a big fan.

Comedy and Miscellany:

Beef and Dairy Network: also British, on the Max Fun network with the McElroys. Fucking weird. I debated putting this in the scripted fiction because it's basically "what if Welcome to Night Vale was a little less story focused but still had throughlines and was specifically about the cattle industry in some absurdist alternate version of our world" but stuck with comedy bc the absurdity outstrips the plot. It's weird!

My Brother, My Brother, and Me: you probably know this one; either you love it or you don't.

My Dad Wrote a Porno: also British and from what I understand a bigger deal over there. Has uh. reached completion, in that they decided they were done, but the books apparently go on (sorry Rocky I'm not buying them). A guy and his two good friends read and roast his father's self-published erotica e-books about Belinda Blumenthal, Pots and Pans saleswoman, ft. bad accents, corporate espionage, and, of course, The Duchess.

The Empty Bowl: Justin McElroy and Dan Goubert of Cerealously's ASMR podcast about cereal. legitimately has helped me calm down when anxious at night. I am not even a big cereal eater it's just entertaining and chill.

Anyway any other podcasts I have listened to I've either forgotten, weren't good enough to recommend, just disappeared without any conclusion [*cough* king falls am] or involve way more reservations than I am willing to go into without knowing more about what you are looking for.

[forthegothicheroine]

Do you have any thoughts about how to do fascism in Arthuriana? Like partially inspired by T.H. White I was thinking of writing Lucius as a sort of combination of a 30s Dictator and the crusading ideal that you get in Medieval literature, which of course looks quite repugnant by today's standards.

I've been turning this over in my head for a few days as it's a very interesting question! To start, let me talk about two versions that did it to different ends.

As you mentioned, in The Once and Future King, Mordred becomes a Hitler (or British fascist) analogue, and predicates his rise to power on persecuting Jews and Moors. I wasn't sure how I felt about this at first, but after thinking it over, I realized that World War II was the defining trauma of White's generation, and if he's going to write about a political faction destroying Britain and plunging it into apocalyptic war, how could they not be fascists? (Plus I got a fanfic out of it.)

On the other hand, in the 2004 King Arthur movie, which I actually overall enjoyed, they made Cerdic the Saxon their fascist villain. He orders all the Celtic women killed so that his men won't breed with them and produce more of their disgusting race...which, if you know anything about the Saxon invasion, is more or less the opposite of how it went. It's like a darker version of the 'tightlacing into dresses without waists' scene in Bridgerton- I'm not a stickler for historical accuracy, but I need it to at least make sense in the world that's being presented to me on screen.

So, what's the deal with fascism? I'll let Umberto Eco give the greater picture, but when I think of fascist villains, I think of three things- an "us" who is great, a "them" who are simultaneously weak and strong, and a mythic "good old days" that never really existed. Given that Arthuriana is a mishmash of time periods and ethnic groups as it is, you have a lot to choose from, both in terms of making it make sense in universe, and in terms of it feeling resonant to a 21st century reader.

If Lucius is your villain (a good choice, I think, he's not used as much as he could be) then you're positioning the "us" as either Rome or Italy. I say "either" because Malory et al had him as an anachronistic Roman emperor, but the Squires Tales series made the interesting choice of him being an Italian prince styling himself the modern Caesar. I'm not Italian, but I think this is something that politicians from Mussolini to Berlusconi have tried to position themselves as to some extent, so I think there's room to explore there.

If "us" is Rome, then "them" must be wherever they're trying to conquer. If you've ever played Fallout New Vegas, the Cosplay Roman Fascists there have "The West" as their enemy, with speeches about how they're doing a great job unifying all the disparate tribes but are hindered by the "degenerates" of the NCR and New Vegas. There are certainly tribes to go around in the British isles, any of which could be your "them" or your "future us, once then kneel." The good old days were the height of the Empire, of course, and depending on whether your Lucius is a Catholic or a Roman pagan, he can call upon a huge history of grandiose mythology to support himself.

If Mordred is your villain, then both his mythic past and his "us" could harken back to the glory days of King Uther, back when the Britons were strong against the Saxons and kings were revered for their might, not their codes of honor. The song Fie on Goodness in Camelot is dark comedy because nobody really talks like that about themselves- but they could voice the same sentiments in different language. "Them" could be Jews and Moors as in T. H. White, but you can pick any influence from the Picts to the Gauls as the simultaneously weak and strong enemy who turned Arthur into a man too soft to lead.

"Uther was a barbarian because he stole another man's wife," Mordred might say, "but Arthur claims to be civilized because he gives his away!"

And then there's that old medieval standbye- the crusades. Just what the hell time period Arthuriana takes place in changes with the writer, but having your villain either outright be a Crusader King or modeling him on one would give you a chilling model to work with. Slaughter and pillage all who get in your way, and you can justify it with ideology. Send every available one of your own men and boys to their deaths and you can do the same. And if the war never ends, so much the better, as your wartime powers never go away.

Thank you for this question, and I'll be very eager to see what you come up with!

[adhd-merlin]

Hey I heard you wanna yap so I'm here to talk Arthuriana books ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ I've got a whole spreadsheet but I've only recently started reading 21st century ones, including Bliss & Blunder which is currently my highest ranked out of the bunch but I know it's gonna be usurped by the one I'm currently reading - The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman. If you can handle long books (almost 700 pages) then you have to read it, it's so well written and goes into the more neglected knights like Bedivere and Palomides (and as with all modern stuff some of the knights get to be gay as a treat). I'm still only 1/4 of the way through but if it stays as good as it's been so far then oh boy. Anyways let me know what your favourite 21st Arthuriana is!

Yaaay yapping time <3

Ooh I can’t believe you’ve got a spreadsheet, haha. I’m fascinated by you spreadsheet people! (I’m not a spreadsheet kind of person, I’m a “I’ll write a random note on my phone that I’ll soon forget about… unless I remember” kind of person).

thank you for the rec!! Imma be honest I don’t think I can handle long books right now, because I’m struggling with concentration, but it sounds interesting! I’ll add it to my wish list in case I feel inspired to read it in future (I use the app Bookshelf to keep track of books read/to read, though there’s not much to keep track of these days lol. I like it because it’s super basic; I don’t even think you need to create an account? Can’t remember. But I can’t be bothered with Goodreads anymore.)

Anyways let me know what your favourite 21st Arthuriana is!

Bliss & Blunder is the only modern one I’ve read actually! I haven’t read many Arthuriana books? I’ve read about Arthuriana texts/adaptations more than I’ve read any actual texts lol. I like hearing about all the lore! But I love thinking/reading about adaptations in general, I think the process itself is so interesting? Like, what elements of a story one chooses to focus on or to discard; what makes a character… well, themselves. If you put Lancelot in the 21st century, what would he be like? How much can you change a story and still recognise it as the same? I find it fascinating to think about!* And obviously Arthurian texts have been inspiring so many people over the centuries across different media, so there’s a lot to explore in that sense.

I would like to read some of the “source” texts at some point, though they are a bit daunting. I gave Le Morte d'Arthur a try and abandoned it quite soon, but I’d like to dip my toes in it again, read some select chapters perhaps. I’d also like to read The Knight of the Cart because Lancelot is such an interesting character.

In terms of modern adaptations (as in, written in modern times), I would like to check out The Once and Future King (the Ill Made Knight in particular, don’t think I could read all the books)—I’ve read contrasting opinions on T.H. White’s work but it’s had a great influence on subsequent adaptations (I think?) that I want to see what all the fuss is about. And I love the whole love triangle drama. An affair so messy we’re still talking about it centuries later? I’m so here for it.

I’ve read a couple of random quotes from Steinbeck’s The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights that made me go “oh I should check this out!”, so that it also on my radar. (Have you read it? If so, what did you think of it?)

*I was in the Sherlock fandom for a while and that’s one of the things I enjoyed about it—all the different adaptations that existed about the same source material. And I don’t even care about Conan Doyle’s stories that much (lol sorry Arthur) so it really was mainly about the adaptations for me. I was studying Russian at uni at the time, so I checked out the “classic” Soviet Sherlock Holmes series, and also the Russian TV adaptation that came out in 2013. I greatly enjoyed the latter because of the way it played with and subverted elements of the original canon—it was great fun! Maybe my favourite Sherlock Holmes adaptation. But Vitaly Solomin's Watson ("Soviet" Watson) has a special place in my heart, he was so cute. Did you know there's a genderbent Holmes & Watson Russian adaptation? And they get to crossdress to get into a gentleman's club. Fascinating. I also think Jonny Lee Miller was great in Elementary, though I’m not a big fan of the procedural format. I did abandon that show after series… three, I think? but I still think he made an interesting Sherlock Holmes. His acting was probably wasted on that series to be honest!)

[tyrantisterror]

Wizard School Mysteries Book 3: Wicked Witchcraft Trivia

Wizard School Mysteries Book 3: Wicked Witchcraft has been out for three weeks now (in paperback and kindle formats), so it's time to continue an old tradition of mine. We're going to talk about slasher movies, faustian pacts, Halloween episodes, and lots and lots of spoilers, so dive in with me after the cut if you've read the book, won't you? WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

General trivia:

I consider this entry the Wizard School Mysteries Halloween special - a spookier-than-normal adventure where our heroes encounter classic horror tropes and have to try and come out on top. I think it's probably going to be the book where the Scooby Doo influence on this series is most prominent - I definitely tried to play into it when designing the book's cover, which is meant to evoke the "Oh no the gang's being chased by the monster!" moments that happen at least once an episode.

As the cover also conveys, this book plays with Slasher tropes a lot as well. I talked about it in the forward a bit, but I do think Slasher films should be in the conversation when we talk about the Mystery Solving Teens genre, even if they're more of a deconstruction of the Mystery Solving Teens tropes than anything else - Mystery Failing Teens, if you will, since the teens in Slasher movies generally ignore all the clues they're given until it's far too late to stop the bad guy. I'm not the first to notice this overlap, as the countless "What if Jason murdered Mystery Inc?" jokes made over the years can attest (it's a Robot Chicken sketch, so you know it's a tired joke), but I thought it'd be interesting to let the crossover of these two genres play in the Teens' favor for once. This is less a story of Jason massacring the scoobies, and more of the scoobies outfoxing Jason.

More than that, though, it's a story of a Faustian pact. One of the things that came up in the research stage of me plotting out this series was the prevalence of devils in the magic traditions of European mythologies. There are a lot of mythic and folkloric wizards whose power is explicitly derived from Satan and his cohorts - even Merlin, in some versions of Arthuriana, is sometimes tied to devilry, with these versions claiming his magic powers and poor moral compass are a result of his father being the Devil himself. And a lot of folkloric demons have a long list of subjects they can teach the people who summon them, which often include types of magic. So while I didn't want all my wizards to get magic from the devil, I thought it'd be interesting to have at least one story arc focus on the devil's role as a teacher - and that aligned with one of my other goals for this series, which was using the wizard school setting as a way to critique real world education problems. What would the devil's education equate to in our modern world? Well, I think an unpaid internship qualifies quite well - he'll pay you in experience, you just have to give him everything you have and then some! And since Gretchen Pappenheimer is the most mad-scientist-y of our meddlesome youths, it only made sense to me that she'd be our unfortunate Faust figure, trapped into a soul-degrading internship by a choice made in innocence of how bad the world can be.

If you look on the publishing info page, you may spy a reference to Michael Jackon and/or Lemon Demon's magnum opus, Spirit Phone!

Chapter 1

Ok, now that we've got the general stuff out of the day, let's go chapter by chapter. I've been reading a lot more manga lately, and one thing that I've found really endearing is the recap page a lot of manga come with after the first volume or so - a brief little summary of the plot so far as well as a list of the main characters (with pictures attached, obviously) and one sentence long descriptions of their personalities. It's not something that's crucial for Wizard School Mysteries to have, necessarily - this is a series that really needs to be read in order, so someone jumping in with book 3 isn't going to have a great time, recap page or no - but given how long the gap between each book's publication is, it could be useful for old readers to be reminded of key plot points before they dive in, and it was fun to make.

While discussing Francane's odd customs that require the differences between family connected by blood vs. family connected by marriage or adoption, Margot relates how the custom was started by a former queen named Ella, whose contentious relationship with her step-family inspired the law. This, of course, would be Midgaheim's Cinderella - and likewise, the Duchess who made strict laws about the care and storage of spindles, Briar Rose, would be Midgaheim's Sleeping Beauty. One of the fun things about making a big multi-mythology crossover is thinking of the consequences of all these stories interacting with their big, dramatic endings - how happily ever after might plant the seeds of new conflicts later on.

There may or may not be some references to the opening number of Beauty and the Beast in the description of Margot and James entering the provincial town of Champagen.

Just as Margot d'Francane's name is a reference to Marie de France (among other things), who is perhaps my favorite medieval writer, Margot's adoptive father/guardian also takes his name from a medieval French writer I love, though his is more obvious. That's right, the blacksmith Creten Detrois is named after the Arthurian Ballad writer Cretien de Troyes.

Creten giving James the protective father third degree is based a bit on my own real life experience. A friend and I were making a day trip to one of Michigan's oldest cemeteries, and when I went to pick her up for it her dad started grilling me, and only halfway through I realized he thought I was taking his daughter out on a date. It was a bit weird and tense but also oddly affirming in a way? I thought it might be nice for James to have the same experience, especially given how the scene for James ends with Creten offering to help "make a man" out of him - a goal James is very much interested in reaching.

One of the subtler traumas of college, in my experience, is how impermanent the concept of "home" becomes when you're at it. I moved to and from so many different residences during my five years of undergraduate work - dormitories, townhouses, apartments, there was at least one big move a year. And when I went back to visit my folks, I was always astounded by how much my town seemed to be changing while I was away - even Home with a capital H was changing while I was away. Ivan's trauma in chapter 1 is sort of a worst case scenario of that - he comes home from his first year of college to find he's not only been evicted, but that the house he lived in has literally been removed brick by brick, with all his possessions sold off.

One of my goals with this series is to try and put some mystique back into how wizards are perceived. A lot of media in the post-Henry Pansley fantasy landscape treats wizards as, like, just normal people who happen to have magic powers in the same way that we happen to have smart phones. Personally, my preference is for the Tolkien style wizards - whether it's Gandalf, Saruman, or the underdeveloped ones, a wizard should feel like An Event when they arrive. They're still a person, yes, but they live in and operate on such a different level of existence from most people that even a casual interaction with them can have big consequences. Rodrigo's curse on Ivan's village is one of my attempts to drive that home - we spend a lot of time with these wizard kids, so it's good to remind the audience that, as human and goofy as they are, they still command a terrifying and awe-inspiring power over magic. In Rodrigo's case, he got to be the mysterious spellcaster who shows up one day to deliver poetic justice to a town full of shitty people, like in a fairy tale.

The concept of a luck child - i.e. the 7th son of a 7th son being gifted with impossibly good luck and a grand destiny - is a folklore trope, and as with Margot's bit in this chapter, we get to explore the social ramifications of that folklore trope being a real, tangible, proven trend in this universe. When you take into account the fact that real-world medieval nobles were already obsessed with gaining and retaining power and wealth through their children, and then add the fact that having a seventh son of a seventh son would guarantee wealth and prestige, and you get Rodrigo's situation, where his parents REALLY want him to have at least seven kids so that one of them could push their family to new heights.

One of the things I try to avoid in my writing is the "forgotten fallen friend" trope, i.e. having a character in a serialized story who dies in a big, dramatic, story-changing manner in one installment, only to have the narrative completely forget about them in all the subsequent installments. This trope isn't necessarily a flaw/bad writing - characters are tools for the narrative to use, and once they've served their intended purpose, you are fully within your rights to discard them for the sake of keeping things trim and tidy. That said, though, there's nothing wrong about finding new uses for a tool you didn't initially intend it for - and I think that a serialized mystery story actually benefits from trying to avoid treating its cast as disposable. If you try to keep a lot of your characters around and treat them as valuable, even if they're minor, then the audience is less likely to have a "Well, obviously the new defense against the dark arts teacher is either the new bad guy this book or one of the victims of the new bad guy" moment. And a coming of age story definitely benefits from this kind of care, as the whole point of coming of age tales is to show the weight of the events that help the protagonist(s) grow up. All this preamble is to say that Polybeus bringing up Gabriev in this chapter isn't just "fanservice" or whatever - for Poly, Gabriev is still haunting the narrative, his ghost hanging over all of Polybeus's actions as he tries to process how Gabriev's death has affected him.

Serena's family is singing "The Irish Ballad" by Tom Lehrer, which I heartily recommend you look up the lyrics to and/or give it a listen. It's in the public domain like all of Tom Lehrer's music, and there's many good performances of it on youtube!

Chapter 2

Margot discovering Helseng, and subsequently arguing with James about him keeping the prophecy secret, are playful jab at the Persona games that serve as WSM's biggest influence. See, in those games the meddling kids have big supernatural plots to deal with, but the player character also has their own secret supernatural subplot that's known only to themselves - namely, their growing relationship with/mentorship by the strange inhabitants of a pocket dimension called the Velvet Room, which itself is a way to explain and explore the mechanics of the game in a way that still more or less makes sense in-universe. The player character is the only one who knows about the Velvet room because the player is the only one who can actually determine how to play the game, and thus their avatar is the only character who needs to explore those mechanics. But, from a narrative perspective, it is kind of weird that you and your friends are solving a supernatural mystery, but there's one huge supernatural thing going on that you never tell them about. The games usually have at least one moment poking fun at this, and Persona 5 subverts that separation in a really compelling way, but there's room to do more with it. And since Wizard School Mysteries is a novel series rather than an RPG, there's no reason I have to stick by the trope at play here. So yeah, our hero's secret benefactor gets found out in book 3 out of 8, and he gets (rightfully) chewed out for keeping it a secret.

In slasher movie fashion, our mystery opens with two young adults getting killed off. Now, you might be looking at the names Donnie Stoat and Hermia Ranchere and thinking to yourself, "Wait a minute, something funny is going on here." Well, here, I'll help you figure out what that funny thing is by pointing out the pattern they're a part of. See, in book 1, one of the victims of the fair folk abduction scheme was Nigel Wydbutock, a boy with an exceedingly British-sounding first name that starts with an N and ends with an L sound, and whose last name, "wide buttock," could also be parsed as, say, "fat ass," or if that's too vulgar, "long bottom." We find out later in this book Nigel did not survive his kidnapping, RIP. In book 2, we heard a story about how a student named Henry Pansley (Henry being a name that can be shortened to, among other things, "Harry" or "Hal," and "Pansley" containing the word "pan," which of course is something like a pot) accidentally killed his competitor in a wizard duel by summoning a deadly snake into the fight. Said competitor was named Wyver Wickam - Wyver being the word "wyvern," itself a synonym for the word "dragon," minus the last letter, which would make it similar to Draco, which is the word "drakon," itself an archaic synonym for the word "dragon," minus the last letter, and Wickham having the syllable "Wick," as in "wicked," which would be like having a last name with the syllable "Mal," as in "Malevolent" or "Malice." And here we have Donnie Stoat - Donnie short for Donald, a stoat being a sort of weasel - and Hermia Ranchere - Hermia being a sort of old-sounding but pleasant lady's name, and Ranch being akin to a Grange - getting the axe. What's the pattern, you might ask? Well, all these characters have silly names, that's the pattern you goof!

Chapter 3

If you read this book in one go (or at least read chapters 2 and 3 right after each other), then you'll hopefully notice that we cut directly from our mysterious killer swinging his blade down on his first victims to a blade cutting through meat in a more innocuous setting, itself a classic horror movie visual that I'm pretty proud of working out how to do in print, thank you very much.

May Shade is named after the titular monster from "The Vampire's Ghost," a somewhat obscure 1958 novelty song that I found on a Halloween playlist ages ago and remain very charmed by. I think there's humor to be had in the fact that the song that inspired her had her winning her soul from a man trying to take it through a high stakes cards game - after all, that's what Wizard School Mysteries itself is in the end.

The coven Gretchen is working plays with various tropes about witch trios in fiction, with there being a young pretty one, a plump motherly one, and a scary old one - i.e. the Maid, the Matron, and the Crone, a trinity called the Three Faces of Eve which shows up in a LOT of European mythologies and literature. Hecate, the Gray Sisters, the Fates, the Norns, the Morrigan, the Weird Sisters from Macbeth, it's a very well-worn trope.

Their names are all shortened from words related to their core sin, Sloth: Inak (inaction), Idel (Idleness), and Indol (Indolence). This extends to the name of their coven itself - Letharg as in Lethargy. The fact that their names are interchangeable and easily confused is also intentional, since ultimately they're all just variations on the same nasty person - sure, Idel is more needlessly aggressive, Indol more prone to sleazy flattery, and Inak is more serious and threatening, but at the end of the day they're more or less one awful, abusive monster.

The obscure Tarot arcana for the coven is The Fates, an alternate name for The Wheel of Fortune. Oh, hey, The Fates are one of those Three Faces of Eve examples too, what are the odds!

We get to meet the Mephistopheles to Gretchen's Dr. Faust here, and his name is Stinkbaby. There are two reasons for this obviously ludicrous name: first, imps in my setting are always saddled with ugly, common-sounding names in the style of the demons from The Screwtape Letters. Second, Stinkbaby takes the form of a cat, and any cat owner will tell you that cats always earn at least one pejorative nickname that's nonetheless said with great love and affection. "Stinkbaby" exists in the middle chunk of the Venn Diagram of "plausible Screwtape Letters OC names" and "mean nicknames for when your beloved pet cat is being a little shit."

I do a lot of references to dialogue in things I like when I write that I then forget about doing when trying to think up trivia sections like this, which I mention because there's one from this chapter I remember only because one of my editor's pointed it out to me. When Stinkbaby, the unimposing inhuman creature that's summoned from another world to tempt Gretchen to sin, arrives, he tells her that he's her "servant, friend, and willing slave," which is a reference to the song "Feed Me! (Git It?)" from Little Shop of Horrors, which is my favorite musical of all time and probably my favorite riff on the Faust story in all of fiction, both of which are high praise.

Unlike the protagonists of certain other wizard school stories, Gretchen's reaction to being given a creature that vocally professes its desire to be her slave is "Oh no" rather than "Sweet, I'm gonna tell it to make me a sandwich," and she maintains this position through the whole story, rather than coming around to say "Actually having a whole race of beings who want to be our slaves kicks ass, I was wrong!" She has and maintains this position because I thought about this plot point for more than five seconds, which I presume the writer of a certain other wizard school story did not do.

One of the other imps is named "Pussbucket" after my favorite example of "replacement for a swear word that sounds worse than the swear word" in fiction, i.e. when Peter Venkman says "Mother... Pussbucket!" in Ghostbusters when actor Bill Murray clearly wanted to say "Mother fucker!" Pussbucket is just such a wonderfully gross phrase, we should say it more to express contempt.

The four imps of the Letharg coven are all common familiar choices. We have a cat and a toad (the two familiars mentioned by the Weird Sisters in Macbeth), a rat, and a goat (a la Black Phillip from The VVitch). I wanted that authentic medieval witchcraft vibe, and figured covering the bases here would help with it.

There might be a subconscious influence from Sabrina the Teenage Witch here - while I didn't have the show in mind while writing this at all, as I write this trivia it strikes me that I did watch a lot of that show, and well... Salem is kind of a shining example of a sarcastic feline witch's familiar, isn't he?

After playing Slasher movie tropes pretty firmly with his teaser introduction in chapter 2, we completely break the rules of that genre with Buddy's more proper introduction here, presenting him in a very human and frail way that would be counter-intuitive to how a Slasher movie functions, especially this early in the plot. Which is, of course, entirely the point - this is not going to be a "meddling kids get slaughtered by the Slasher villain" story, where the lighter genre is overridden by the darker one it's crossing paths with. Instead, it's the Slasher genre whose tropes will buckle and sway under the weight of the lighter Mystery Solving Teens story they've wandered into. Jason's not cutting off Scooby Doo's head here - he's being fed soup by a plucky nerd and her sarcastic talking cat.

We also see the Faust narrative breaking here, as Gretchen, faced with every reason to indulge in vices, remains true to her morals anyway, much to her tempter's frustration. That's ultimately our villains' problem in this book - they're in the wrong genre!

Chapter 4

Like the one literary vampire who towers above all, May Shade tells her mortal acquaintance to "enter freely of your own will and leave some of the happiness you bring!"

James thinking vampires would look more decayed/rotten than May does is my nod to the fact that most European folklore vampires weren't as well preserved as modern vamps are - when a person in the middle ages writes about a "walking corpse," they're not talking about the kind that's been pumped full of preservatives to keep it from curdling like sour milk a few hours after death. May is lucky to be a vampire inspired by the more modern takes, but as we'll see later in the book, that's not universally true for all the different types of vampires in Midgaheim.

I hope the joke of May Shade, a vampire, saying that the name Helseng (Helsing) "doesn't ring a bell" lands with you. "Van Helsing? Never heard of 'em," is a funny thing for a vampire to say in my personal opinion.

There's also a bit of irony in May, a vampire, coming to (a) Helseng's (Helsing's) defense. But hopefully it's not too surprising - vampires, especially the shapeshifting kind like May, would know too well how it feels to be a creature that has to disguise their true nature among people in order to interact with them.

You know how in the fourth Henry Pansley story he's forced to participate in a big life-threatening tournament against his will, yet still inexplicably goes out of his way to try and win each challenge just because people pressure him into it? Yeah, James Chaucer wouldn't put up with that shit. He would throw every event that didn't involve saving people's lives, just beef it entirely on purpose while flipping people the bird. One thing I wanted to make clear about him is that helping people and unraveling evil plots is something James chooses to do, regardless of whether or not someone else told him to do so first - even when it comes to Helseng's prophecy, recall that James was given the prophecy ONLY when he confirmed he wanted to hear it. That's why Gernderf's RA plot succeeds in snaring him where previous attempts failed - James isn't motivated by "Go beat up this guy because I told you he's bad," but "These people need help and you might be the only one who can do it for them" might just work.

Ladislava "Good Lad" Chopin is our Temperance Arcana, and like many of the Arcana characters in this series she doesn't quite embody the full nature of her card yet. It's a shame for her that the Heavenly Virtue that remained in the Tarot arcana was Temperance instead of Diligence, because she'd have the latter in the bag easily. Temperance, however, she struggles with, although in the opposite direction than most stories might go - rather than being someone who pursues pleasure over necessity, she's someone who over-works instead, which was a fatal flaw that too many I knew in college suffered from (myself included at least a few times). It's kind of easy to recognize when you're slacking off and letting your responsibilities slide, even if you don't want to do anything about it - but it's a lot harder, in my experience, to realizing you're working yourself to exhaustion and heaping unhealthy amounts of stress on yourself trying to live up to an impossible standard. So, for the sake of overachievers like my past self, let's hope Lad listens to the good advice of her friends and stops overworking herself... and that James realizes that his advice should also apply to himself, honestly, and also to Gretchen, and... look maybe a LOT of people deserve to give themselves a few more breaks, actually.

Chapter 5

The title of this chapter is, obviously, a medieval-ish riff on Friday the 13th and its many sequels.

Ok, so, obviously Buddy isn't just a riff on slashers in general, but Jason Voorhees specifically - his first kill is even by a lake. One of the reasons Jason is my favorite of the Big Name slashers is that he has so much pathos in his backstory, even if the nature of his genre keeps that from being explored in any amount of depth. Here's a person with the mind of a child and the body of a monster, who suffered a near-death experience at the hands of negligent childcare providers, who witnessed his mother being decapitated for trying to avenge his supposed death, and who has dedicated his life to making sure that no other kids or mothers die to that same negligence, to the point where he rises from the grave to keep up that crusade. That's honestly deeply tragic, and in any other horror genre it'd be ripe for exploring in depth. There's potential in Jason to be as complicated and melancholy a figure as the Frankenstein monster or the Phantom of the Opera, but because Slasher movies are built to be focused on hedonistic thrills and catharsis, all that tragedy is little more than flavoring for violent set pieces. But if you took that same character concept and put it into a different genre, well, you'd have a character who's not really Jason Voorhees anymore, but explores what Jason could be, and I think that's fun.

Buddy's stock slasher powers of nigh-invulnerability and tendency to teleport to where the story needs him to be to surprise the audience and menace his victims work pretty well with the stock abilities of ghost, I feel.

Buddy's first fight with the Youths is meant to show that, for all the maddening power they have at their disposal, they're still vulnerable - hopefully without feeling too cheap, either. I wanted this fight to illustrate why Occult and Arcane powers differ - the youths keep using attacks that damage physical matter, but Buddy, by dint of being a ghost, can weather that pretty easily. You can't kill what's already dead, and you can't trap something in a crystal if it can easily phase through walls and other physical barriers.

His clash with Margot, specifically, is meant to be a sly nod to Freddy vs. Jason - a big, masked monster with a cleaver-bladed sword clashing with someone who has a glove tipped with metal claws and an association with fire.

Oh hey, Margot used another one liner her friends suggested in The Meddlesome Youths! Guess that just leaves Gretchen's suggestion of "Abra ca-fuck you!"

Kane Hodder, the actor who played Jason the most times, was adamant that Jason doesn't hurt animals or kids, and Buddy takes that rule to a logical (in my mind) extreme - namely that, as an undead brute with the mind of a child, he thinks big animals are really cool, which is why his first instinct when confronted by a fire-breathing dragon is to try and pet it.

Chapter 6

Gretchen giving Buddy a name, and this in turn being the key to breaking him free of the coven, has a sort of metatextual layer to it. See, Jason Voorhees and his predecessor, Michael Myers, were made in the mold of the anonymous killers of early slasher/exploitation horror films. No one remembers the name of the killers in Pieces or Black Christmas, because their names aren't important - their personalities aren't important, because, despite being mundane human killers, they aren't characters in the narrative so much as forces of conflict, being less humanized than monsters like Dracula or Frankenstein. Jason and Michael were meant to work that way too, but the combination of names, iconic costume designs, and backstories with actual pathos made them both into characters despite the intention not to do so. And both franchises realized this and tried to swerve away from it, each trying to get rid of their iconic slashers with an entry that shifted to a different killer - and in each case, audiences hated those attempts and demanded they get their beloved slasher characters back. A name, iconic look, and backstory kept Jason from being a truly inhuman killer and made him irreplaceable - so too does it give Buddy more humanity than his in-universe creators intended.

The description of Marquise Shax provided by Serena's library book is adapted from his entry in The Lesser Key of Solomon, with a few additions to make his relevance to this story more obvious. The dramatic irony of Serena figuring out the devil behind the Letharg coven well before getting any proof of his involvement is hopefully pretty juicy.

The mcguffin Lord Dhenregirr is looking for in this book, the Eye of Errgonogad, is named after The Eye of Argon, one of the most notoriously bad fantasy books ever written. The titular eye of argon was a "red emerald," which, given the fact that Lord Dhenregirr is a very loose parody of Voldemort, would make the Eye of Errgonogad a loose equivalent of the Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone. Poor bastard's three books into this series and he still hasn't gotten the first book's mcguffin.

James calling Dhenregirr's crew the "bone brigade" is a reference to the I Think You Should Leave skit about Ebeneezer Scrooge fighting evil skeletons from the Christmas Waaaaay Future. Frickin' Bonies!

It's kind of funny that Lord Dhenregirr gives James a concise and informative lesson on necromancy - a topic that the AAAM purposely refuses to cover - in the ruins of a near identical castle to the AAAM, while sitting in a throne made of broken podiums. Probably means nothing.

Chapter 7

I'm not sure if people caught Polybeus's many ignored attempts to flirt with Gretchen in the first two books, but they were there! His one-sided crush was based on the popular fan-interpretation of Wyver Wickham Draco Malfoy having a crush on Hermia Ranchere Hermione - and, like most elements of the Henry Pansley stories I homaged in WSM, I was more inspired by the Very Potter Musical parody take than the actual text of the Terf Queen's books.

I want every book in this series to have at least one chapter that's basically a stupid adventure college kids would get up to if they had magic. The first book had kids riding a magic carpet off a roof, the second had the needlessly gendered night out, and this one has the magic school equivalent of urban exploring: seeking out and making a daytrip to the land of the dead.

The shades in the land of the dead are inspired by the blood-sucking ghosts of the same name from Homer's The Odyssey and, you know, by extension Greek Mythology in general. The revenants are there because I love Romero-style shambling zombies, and also because I wanted to establish in-universe that James had a good reason to think vampires were often more corpse-y than May Shade.

Chapter 8

Readers of No Sympathies might recognize some familiar elements in Stinkbaby's description of Hell. Yep, it's the same Hell alright!

The punishment dolled out by Dis, the circle of Lust, is based on the Twilight Zone episode "A Nice Place to Visit."

This is the second WSM book to include a paraphrase from Wizard People, Dear Reader, and that paraphrase happens in this very chapter! Can you find it?

I would like it on the record that I debated very intensely with myself about whether or not to show the transphobia of the Letharg coven in their treatment of Gretchen, up to and including getting one of my trans friends to look it over as a sensitivity reader. The intent was not to be exploitative, but rather to 1. show how the coven will jump on any reason they can find to dehumanize Gretchen so they can feel justified exploiting her, and 2. to make it abundantly clear that yes, Gretchen IS trans, since apparently some readers were in doubt about this during the first two books. I also think that, in our current climate, there is something very topical about an all-female organization that claims to empower its members actually preying upon the youth. The coven are, more or less, trans-exclusive radical feminists.

It's hard to make it clear in text, but my fancast for minor character Professor Romero Medina is Vincent Price.

Perhaps you've noticed that the staff of the AAAM seem much less callous towards students in this book than they did in the first. That was intentional! In my personal experience, your first year of college is kind of isolating - most of the gen ed classes you'll be taking are big lecture halls filled with hundreds of kids, and the professors cannot devote themselves to every student to the degree that public school teachers can as a result, which makes them seem like they don't care about you. The fact that college teachers aren't penalized for students failing to the same degree as public school teachers also adds to this - a public school teacher HAS to try and intervene when a student is floundering in their class (or at least fake it enough to keep plausible deniability) or they'll face severe consequences, while college professors don't really - pass or fail, the college has your money already, so it's on YOU to care about your success. But just because college professors don't have those public school incentives to care doesn't mean they won't - as I went on in my college career, I met plenty of professors who did care a lot, who looked out for me and reached out to try and help me succeed (and more than a few who tried to sway me to major in their subject instead of the one I was already pursuing - I had one teacher who REALLY wanted me to become a linguist, and to be fair, I did name one of WSM's most prominent teachers after two linguistic terms). Romero Medina enters the scene seeming like he'll be cold and cruel, and narrative convention makes us fear he has some bad news for Gretchen, but instead we're surprised that he's actually here to try and give her a break. The system may not incentivize kindness, but that doesn't mean kindness isn't there regardless.

On a lighter note, acting like complete jackasses with your friends in the college cafeterias is ALSO based on my personal college experiences.

Most of the RA requests are references to fantasy media, some very popular, some obscure. Can you figure them out?

The student who fucked up twisting time and space and ended up a desiccated corpse is not a reference to anything, he's just a fun reminder that Magic Can Fucking Kill You.

Loxy Reynard exists because, as the age of the internet well and truly proves, if you could magically modify your appearance, some people WILL choose to be furries, and to deny this is to deny the truth of humanity. As for why she dealt with pervert toilets...

The "wildman" student is a Sasquatch, specifically. What's he doing in Midgaheim? That's his business. What are you, a cop?

Buddy's first words to James being "Ki... ki... ma... ma..." is a reference to the classic music sting of the Friday the 13th franchise - while people often write it out as "ch ch ch ah ah ah," it's actually "ki ki ki ma ma ma," and is meant to be a sort of ghostly version of Pamela Voorhees's madness mantra of "Kill them, mommy, kill them!" Kill kill kill, mom mom mom

When you have the chance to make a gargoyle and a Jason Voorhees knockoff fight, you fucking take it.

Chapter 9

If you've been paying attention, you might have noticed a slowly growing subplot that the homunculi servants of the AAAM might not be treated well. The next book is going to deal with this in earnest, and if you're worried, please no the solution won't be "Hermione shut up no one cares, they like being slaves anyway."

Mordobearns are not a pre-existing mythological entity, but rather a TT original creation. Their name is a sloppy portmanteau of the Old English words for "death" and "child" - literal Murder Babies. That's a good enough name for a species of Jason Voorhees ripoffs.

Everyone's disgust at what's involved in creating a mordobearn hopefully underlines the pathos inherent to characters like Jason and Buddy that's so often ignored. Like, if you actually stop to think about it, they're very much victims in this too!

Stinkbaby's big out-of-body experience with Gretchen is a reference to Faust - specifically the scenes where Mephistopheles shows Dr. Faust the natural world, and in particular the versions where he shows Faust the planets. I like that scene because it shows why all demons in the Ars Goetia and the like would have "can teach various earth sciences to the summoner" in their list of skills. My take is also sort of a subversion of that scene, though - where Mephistopheles showed Faust the universe to ensure the doctor would succumb to temptation, here Stinkbaby, who is accidentally being tempted to do good by Gretchen's continued kindness, shows her the universe in an attempt to comfort her and strengthen her resolve.

Chapter 10

The title of this chapter is a riff on "The Man Behind the Mask," a rock song that was specifically written about/for Jason Voorhees himself.

So, ok, on one level the way the youths convince Buddy to stand down is a meta-commentary on the way the character he's inspired by is shackled by genre conventions - the pathos is there, but he's kept from embracing it, and thus we don't get to explore it, because the demands of his creators and their plans for him to be their killing machine keep him chained away from character growth. By focusing on the pathos built into his character and removing the constraints of the spell that made him (i.e. the Slasher genre), our slasher is free to be Buddy.

This is also very much a Persona 4 kind of climactic scene - the big bad villain has a final stand with our plucky heroes, who've learned his tactics and figured out how to get past his strengths so they can talk him down, at which point the "villain" exposes their vulnerabilities and realizes they don't have to be a monster they thought they were doomed to be. Again, in a meta context, this is redemption by way of genre change - the slasher wandered into a mystery solving teens story and ended up getting the psychiatric help he needed.

Chapter 11

God it was fun to write a demon fucking shit up again.

There were a number of reasons I chose Shax for this book, but one of them was that I wanted to draw a Skeksi-ish monster, and his description made me think he'd fit the bill.

Originally Shax was planned to be from Gehenna, i.e. the ring of sloth, since the extended metaphor of the conflict here is "unpaid student internships = a Faustian bargain," and the core evil at the heart of real life unpaid internships is very much sloth. A company has a bunch of mindless grunt work to do, and rather than pay someone a decent wage to do it, they trick gullible young people into doing it for free under the lie that it will give them valuable knowledge about their chosen field and help them get a better job later on. But, like, it's not just sloth, is it? If it was just laziness, people might, like, notice and get the law to do something to stop it. No, the reason this practice stays around is because it also gives a financial incentive to employers who use it - the free labor allows them to pinch some valuable pennies to pass up to the CEOs, after all. Sloth may be the main sin at the heart of unpaid internships, but Greed is what facilitates them and makes them a sustainable act of cruelty. So it is in Gretchen's pact - the deal may have been brokered by Slothful humans and masterminded by a high ranking demon of Sloth, but it takes a demon of Greed (and several of his own underpaid henchmen) to actually make the scheme work.

Chapter 12

I enjoyed writing the conversation about culturally specific psychopomps in this chapter. I think it's neat that so many cultures not only decided there must be a life after death, but that there'd also be at least one guy whose main purpose was to help you find your way around there. I also think psychopomps just make for inherently interesting characters - like the devil, they personify something humans naturally obsess over, in this case being the most primal fear of all creatures. How you personify that concept says a lot about you and your view of the world, in my opinion. It's always fertile story-telling ground.

See, I told you Gabriev was haunting the narrative!

He's not the only one, either. James hasn't forgotten Laurel Creusa, despite only knowing her for the span of one short conversation. Again, just because a character served their intended purpose for the narrative doesn't mean that has to be the ONLY purpose they can serve.

Insert joke about me airing my infatuation with Hela on tumblr here

Chapter 13

I had a LOT of fun working with the blending of the different mythological afterlifes in this book - a Christian demon haggling with Norse and Greco-Roman death gods for a mortal soul in a bureaucratic clusterfuck is just so amusing to me. Poor bastard can't get his damned soul through customs!

The title of this chapter is a play on The Devil and Daniel Webster, and in turn a play on the many parodies of/homages to that play, such as The Devil and Daniel Mouse. The plot of this chapter is a riff on it too, actually - our heroes organize a trial for their friend's soul, with all sorts of supernatural creatures providing the rest of the court staff.

And we get the reveal of Helseng's true nature as an Angel of Death!

Her Tarot Arcana is very fitting, no?

If you look closely at the cover of this book, you might spot Helseng's true self hiding in the trees. You didn't even know you were looking at a spoiler the whole time, did you?

Her full/true name, Helsengel, has two layers to it. First, it ends in "el," which is true of most Abrahamic angel names, and basically means her name ends in "of God." For example, Archangel Michael's name can be translated as "Gift of God." Of course, "Helseng" doesn't mean anything in particular, so her name is just "Helseng of God," which is pretty funny - but when you say her name out loud, it sort of sounds like "Hell's Angel," which isn't really meaningful for Helseng (she is, despite appearances, very much an angel of Heaven - though I suppose her work as a psychopomp requires her to deliver some clients to Hell every now and then), but is a fun little thing to note.

Helsengel specifies that she is a "blue death" for a number of metanarrative reasons in addition to just the in-story need for exposition about how diverse psychopomps in this setting are. Ok, so: the main inspiration for this series, the Persona game series, has a recurring supernatural figure named Igor who helps the protagonist of each game deal with the various supernatural bullshit on their plate. Igor lives in "the velvet room," which changes its appearance and style to fit each game's theme, but always has a monochromatic blue color scheme. This is a reference to Edgar Allen Poe's The Masque of the Red Death (which, unrelatedly, is my favorite of Poe's stories), and not the only one the Persona game series makes for that. In The Masque of the Red Death, the titular masque takes place in a castle with several themed rooms, each of which has a monochromatic color scheme. The blue room is the first, followed by purple, green, orange, white, violet, and finally, breaking the scheme, a black room with red trimmings lit by red light. The red death, meanwhile, is a plague, but also is personified in the play as a very grim psychopomp, which deals a fatal justice to the corrupt partiers after being exposed in the black and red rood. When Roger Corman adapted this story into a feature film, one idea he incorporated was that the other room colors ALSO had a plague/psychopomp associated with them, showing up at the end to talk with the Red Death before going off to their business. So Helseng, who fills Igor's role as the helper of the protagonist in WSM, doesn't quite have a velvet room of her own, but she does make reference to The Masque of the Red Death by being the (or rather a - there are too many people, and too many psychopomps, for Helseng to be the ONLY one in this world) Blue Death to the Masque's Red.

Keen-eyed readers who've seen the colored Tarot cards might notice something about Gretchen's illustration now:

Who is the mysterious Archduchess of Gehenna? Hmm, seems like a mystery. At wizard school, no less.

In my little mythos, Pyschopomps/angels of death like Helseng are specifically considered angels of Diligence, the Heavenly Virtue that is considered the counterpart and antithesis to the Deadly Sin of Sloth. Because psychopomps have a LOT of work on the mortal plane to do, you see - as Discworld's personification of Death would note, they're all about The Duty. Now, notably, Ignorance, i.e. the failure to learn important information that could help yourself and others due to one's own choice not to put the effort in, is considered a sin of sloth. What is the antithesis of Ignorance, then? Well, I think one would argue it's Education. And so we have two big forces controlling this narrative behind the scenes: an angel of Diligence, and a demon of Sloth... or, perhaps, a champion of Education vs. a villain of Ignorance. (I probably shouldn't spell out my themes like this - takes the fun away from other people - but I've been hiding this plot development since before the first book came out, allow me to gush).

Also, given that Temperance is one of the major arcana, and an early Tarot set also included Charity in the roster, I wonder if all the seven heavenly virtues were in the game at one point - and for that matter, maybe the sins were too? Something to ponder.

Gretchen finally figuring out the HRT spell and revealing her face for the first time hit me hard when I wrote it - fully had me crying while typing, truly embarrassing. Hopefully it landed well for you too!

Chapter 14

After all the shit he's gone through, I can think of no child who deserves to get to routinely ride a dragon than Buddy.

More seriously: my dad pointed out to me that a common trend in movies aimed at kids for my generation and those after it was the young protagonist getting to ride some sort of big, flying creature. You have the kid riding Marahute the eagle in Rescuers Down Under, Henry Pansley riding a hippogriff in the third Herbie Porber movie (you know, the third entry in that wizard school series that was oddly spookier than the rest), Hiccup riding Toothless, etc. It's a pretty striking visual thrill for kids, isn't it? I thought it'd be nice to give it to Buddy to show that despite everything, he's gonna be ok.

A recurring trend of Gretchen's life before this book is people reaching out to her and her attempting to push them away out of the joint fear that 1. they're only pretending to like her and secretly hate her and 2. they only like her because she's accidentally tricked them into thinking she's a good person. As of the end of this book, she's finally accepting that people may genuinely like her and allowing herself to be loved, which is why it was important to me to bring back the subplot of the book club that wanted her to join. She's letting people love her - she's no longer afraid to show her face. Gretchen's going to be ok.

If you're wondering why most and possibly all of my Meddlesome Youths have intense self loathing and anxiety about not being worth a damn as human beings, well... that's certainly not based on my own psychological problems. Certainly not. I don't have imposter syndrome, no sir.

Keep an eye on that Ikarus Dactylus. A kid like that is liable to reach heights we've never hope to achieve. I mean, he stopped the dark lord from getting the philosopher's stone - err, Eye of Errgonogad!

And so we end with Rodrigo and Ivan about to pursue career paths, James and pals set to figure out whether the homunculi are being exploited, and Gernderf and James understanding each other better while still lying to each other's faces. There are still more mysteries to solve - good thing we have five more books!

[notbecauseofvictories]

Hello, would you happen to have any book recs on arthurian retellings? I've read th white, malory, tolkien and steinbeck and was wondering if there's anymore around that leans into the more fantastical or weird. Either way, any recs would be appreciated please and thank you!

Retellings, no---unfortunately, once you move outside of Malory and de Troyes etc., you're largely in the world of literary classics (e.g., White) or YA novels (e.g., Gerald Morris, my beloved). There was a brief period of resurgence in the 70s with authors like Mary Stewart and Thomas Berger trying their hand at Arthuriana, and the 90s were lousy with juvenilia (I was there, I remember!) but few of them lean into the fantastical in the way you mean.

....that said, there's an unexpected wealth of novels that aren't straight adaptations, but do play with the mythos in interesting ways.

My actual reason for reblogging that post was that I just finished Perilous Times, by Thomas D. Lee. It's set in a future world when the UK is being swallowed by rising seas, half the country has been sold to private corporations, and the other half has devolved into factionalist infighting---oh, and this is about when Sir Kay is roused from his eternal slumber, and told to go kill a dragon. (Slowly, you discover that eternal slumber isn't really "eternal"; he and his fellow knights have been called up a dozen times, each worse, bloodier, and more morally implicating than the last.)

It is a weird as hell set up, and it doesn't get any less weird once you throw in the fay, Welsh independents, refugee camps, and explosions. Nevertheless, I enjoyed myself immensely.

I think that's my takeaway---if you've already read the greats, you can branch out into those authors using Arthuriana as a tool rather than an end in itself. For example, I just started Donald Barthelme's The King, which is the Arthurian cycle transliterated to WWII. I've only read the first bit, but this exchange had me in hysterics:

In the end, I've already read Malory, etc. I'd love a truly mystical Arthurian retelling, that takes advantage of how wide, deep, and unexplained, inexplicable, the world was around the Round Table. However, barring that, I like it when an author does something with all the paper dolls left behind---even if it involves Merlin licking mushrooms, or Lancelot's bloody mace being stolen from the pub washroom.

[camlannpod]

first of all: I am having a blast with Camlann, it's been a while since I've excitedly awaited the new episodes of an audio drama! Thank you for putting this amazing story out in the world :) I have Very Important Burning Questions after the main character descriptions - 1) what type of dog/breed is Gelert? 2) is Gwaine a snapback guy? 3) are there any sort of headcanons floating around regarding Kay's appearance (ngl, I heard him speak and I was immidiately like. yeah. this checks out. annoying little shit :) ) bonus question: has there been any concious choice made for the spelling of the names? as someone who has studied the mabinogi and had to translate sections pwyll and branwen (and voluntarily had a go at Yr Afallenau Myrddin), I have noticed my brain tends to default to certain spellings, so I was wondering if there is a reason for the spellings you've chosen?

Hello hello hello!!!! Thank you so much for the kind words this is lovely of you!!!!

Regarding your questions:

Gelert is an Irish Wolfhound! Big grey boi

Hmmm, snapback might be slightly too American for him. Gwaine is quite proudly Scottish. He was living in Bristol though, so he's definitely a fashionable sunglasses guy.

Hahaha yep! Honestly with Kay the defining feature is Forgettable. Like, I'm kind of joking and I'm kind of not. He's someone who easily blends into crowds and who people tend to pass over and underestimate. He was a scrum-half on the rugby team, so he's definitely wiry. But he's not bulky, and I always imagine everything about him being a bit washed out. I also imagine him as shorter than Arthur and Gwaine.

Kind of! Also hell YES fellow medieval Welsh person!! So broadly speaking when it comes to the character's modern names I wanted very modernised, easy to pronounce names. This is partly a practical issue - the actors have to say the names a lot, and not all of them speak Welsh. But it's also about the fact that Camlann is very much a story that rejects the premise that there is a 'pure' or 'true' version of any story, or the idea that you need the oldest or most accurate name to really connect with it. So with Gwaine - Gavin, Owen, Owain etc could work just as well as Gawain. It's also sometimes a character choice - for example Dai very specifically wanted to keep using a Welsh name when he moved to England. Dai is easy for English speakers to say, but still distinctively Welsh, so it was the compromise he settled for. And then sometimes it's kind of a backstory thing - Gwen's Dad Kai taught Western Literature at a university in Hong Kong. He was a single dad, and Gwen was his only child, so they're very close. Gwen's mother gave her her Chinese name, Shújūn, but left when she was a baby. So, (unusually), Gwen and her Dad chose her English name together when she was a teenager. But because Kai taught broadly Western Literature, he was working with English Arthuriana rather than Welsh, hence Guinevere/Gwen instead of, for example, Gwenhwyfar.

Thank you so much for the questions, andf for listening to the show!!! It's always exciting to get a chance to ramble about it.

[grifff17]

Audiodrama Sunday 3/31/24

Writing this at 11pm, don't tell me I'm procrastinating. On Wednesday I briefly thought it was Sunday and got halfway thru writing this post before realizing, not sure how that happened.

Well anyways @camlannpod this week was incredible, my favorite episode of the show yet. I think that one of the reasons that I liked this episode more than the others is that I am familiar with the source material, as opposed to Arthuriana which I am definitely not. It was such a cool modern take on an ancient character, the sound design was incredible, and it also raised more questions about the worldbuilding.

Also episode 2 of @worldgonewrongpod! Really liked this episode. Maybe its just because I've been obsessed with time loops recently, but this episode interested me more than werewolves did. Can't wait to see what the teaser for the third episode was about.

Two new True Tales of the Illuminati minisodes. I love the humor of this show, glad to see that the next season got funded.

@midstpodcast holy shit what an episode. I don't want to put spoilers here, but wow they really did just totally reshape our understanding of the story in 1 conversation.

I started s2 of @kingmakerpod! I really like how this season has a little bit more of a focus on geopolitics and various political figures, it's super interesting to me. Also the Flat Stanley fleshcrafter who helped with the jailbreak was horrifying. He can fold other people???

Part 2 of Mission Rejected's s5 pilot episode came out this week. I think that was one of my favorite episode of the show, it did so much for Skip and McGrath's characters and their relationship. I already made a much longer post raving about it, so I won't say any more.

The next season of @midnightburgr starts in 2 weeks, so I decided to relisten to some of it. I decided to listen to the 4 episodes in the last season after "Pockets", because I already relistened to that one shortly after it came out . The Pyrophyte is such an insane episode, in so many ways. Cannot wait for the next season.

[setaripendragon]

JSaMN Readalong Liveblog - Chapters 2-3

Honestly, I have no idea if I'll be able to keep up with this, the first one took an entire afternoon, and while I have a lot of free time, I'm not sure I have that much free time XD Either way, I'm going to try, and see how I get on, because this is rather fun, if time-consuming. I've never actually taken the time to write down my thoughts as I read a book before. My approach to fiction is generally that if I'm not so absorbed I forget the real world exists, I'll go read something else, which makes this sort of liveblogging a bit impossible. Alright, here we go.

Chapter 2 - The Old Starre Inn (January - Fabruary 1807)

Every time I read or hear 'the old starre inn', my mind puts it to the tune of The Magician in York. (Warning: song contains spoilers up to chapter 4 of the book, I think.)

Narrator: Chapter 2: The Old Starre Inn Me: All on a winter's day~

I find it very interesting, the fact that Norrell gives them no specifics as to the magic he's done. After all, he hangs so much pride on his status as a practical magician that you'd think he'd want to show off. But it doesn't feel at all out of character, as he sees these 'pretend' magicians as so far beneath him that why would he need to?

Which is in such contrast to Honeyfoot's impression of him as 'humble' that it's funny. But at the same time, I don't think Honeyfoot is entirely wrong in his impression of Norrell. 'Shy' perhaps gives the wrong impression, but I get very vivid vibes from Norrell of that loner kid on the playground who no one wants to play with because they're 'weird', except once they settle into their isolation and do something cool because they're just trying to have fun by themself, everyone's suddenly interested in them, and their response is 'fuck off, it's mine not yours'.

"For the nation's good. He is a gentleman, he knows his duty..." This is such an alien perspective to me. I know it's a very common attitude of the time, and something of a theme in the book, but there's a whole commentary here on community and how people's sense of belonging has changed over time that I don't have the brain-power to make right now.

"Magicians in England are a peculiarly ungrateful set of men." I love this sentence. 'Magicians in England' - you mean the rich white gentlemen calling themselves magicians? Ungrateful? Perish the thought! XD

The fact that York is 'one of the most magical cities in England' with the possible exception of Newcastle is such an interesting piece of worldbuilding, and I can't help but wonder if that's a modern (to the book) thing, that simply scholars of magic happened to gather and set off a positive feedback loop, or if there is some in-world... concentration of magic. Given the connection of nature and magic, and the Yorkshire moors being so very iconic, there might be something to that?

Also, loving another little taste of the Raven King mythos, with the mention of 'the King's city of Newcastle'. Honestly, I've never been overly invested in English history (save for Arthuriana, but that's fantasy), but the way this book builds the fantasy on top of a skeleton of truth makes me much more interested in finding out about reality as much as the in-book lore of the place. (Much in the same way Assassin's Creed made me interested in finding out the truth of the history it depicts to better compare the story to.)

I might have to go on a wikipedia spiral about the history of places like York and Newcastle at some point. If these liveblogs don't swallow my entire weekend XD

"We do not care for men who build their reputations at the expense of other men's peace of mind." I do not like this man. (I know I'm not supposed to like this man, he is a representation of the worst sort of self-aggrandizing and complacent entitlement of rich white armchair-scholars, but it bears saying; I really don't like him XD Much respect to Segundus for not punching him in the face.)

"English magicians were only ever given common ivy." Ah, symbolism. I have a lot of thoughts about why ivy, honestly, and I definitely want to do some research on this later, but the phrasing here is so telling. 'Only ever given common ivy', making it so blatantly not some sort of accolade, but something commonplace and unremarkable. There's also the fact that ivy can be associated with neglect, as it's seen so often on old, crumbling buildings, and as a symbol of nature 'reclaiming' or even taking over that which people have built. (Again with the ominous whimsy of this book; the gothic imagery of an old house all over-taken by ivy matched with the tone in which the comparison is made making light of potential drama of the symbolism.)

There's also the correlation between ivy and lovers (ivy clings and binds and twines around things. And I recall reading somewhere about it being used for symbolism in the story of Tristan and Isolde?) but I don't think that's quite as applicable here, even though my brain does love to chew on it.

I'm noticing now, as well, that the author makes excellent use of 'show don't tell'. Instead of simply telling us that the room was noisy and everyone was shouting over each other, though we do get told that, we're also given the example of an old man being very passionate about some point that no one can actually hear over the noise.

I find it interesting because I've been reading a lot of things expressing frustration with the maxim because, I think, people take it too literally. That you must never tell, and only show, which of course will absolutely ruin your pacing and make your story very boring. But this, here, is what I think it means. Of course we could simply have been told 'it got loud as everyone argued', but the art of writing is not to simply tell people what happened, but to make them feel it. And by 'showing' us this little snapshot, by giving the noise a face in this old man who cannot make himself heard over the din, despite being very engaged in making his point, it makes the whole business feel much more real.

Oh, I feel so bad for Honeyfoot and Segundus in this part. Although I find it very interesting that we never actually got to see whether Norrell did do any magic for them. We cut from him confessing that he's a practical magician to Segundus and Honeyfoot leaving, and we don't actually know what happened in between.

And, of course, neither do Honeyfoot and Segundus. Which is deeply, deeply unnerving to me when I think through the implications. Not knowing where you are is one thing, but not knowing where you have been is a whole nother level of creepy. And yet, the narrative doesn't treat it as a particularly horrifying occurance. (Again with the ominous whimsy.)

There is something of a theme of this, too, in the book, with the truly horrifying things that magic makes people capable of being treated as a sort of just a thing magic can do, rather than lingering on the violations of privacy, personhood, and autonomy. Not to say that I feel that the narrative is treating them as inconsequential or in some way not as bad as they really are, but that it doesn't pass judgement on it, and lets you draw your own conclusions (which is a bit refreshing in this resurgence of purity culture in fandom at the moment).

Like, here, Segundus doesn't react with any particular horror or upset at his confusion and disorientation. Which, honestly, I find only heightens my own horror. He's just... sort of vague and fuzzy about it all, even in his emotional reaction to his memory being vague and fuzzy. (Like how someone with mind control telling someone to 'do a bad thing' is not nearly so horrifying as someone with mind control telling someone that 'you want to do a bad thing')

I find this part particularly gave me shivers, when Segundus and Honeyfoot are being questioned about the library and they're asked of the books:

"Had they been permitted to take them down and look inside them?" "Oh, no."

Like, everything else we hear from them is just... an obfuscation of the facts? There were a lot of books in the library, some of them were very rare, and that's the impression they've been left with even if they can't remember the specifics, but that? That, we know for a fact to be false.

Which then very abruptly throws Segundus's previous assertion that he knows for a fact that he hadn't seen any magic done into doubt.

Honestly I think that whole sequence is masterfully done. Because at the time, the way Segundus explains it, we're given no reason to doubt his assertion. He says he feels as though he saw magic, but knows for a fact that he didn't. Which can very easily explain away his awareness of the extra lighting and the... (I keep wanting to call it a maze-array, but that's the wrong fandom XD) directionlessness of the hallway, as him having the sense of magic, but not, actually, knowing for sure it was such because neither he nor us the audience were shown Norrell actually casting those spells.

Except then we get that blatant untruth, and suddenly that blank space of time between Norrell's confession at the end of chapter 1 and Honeyfoot and Segundus leaving at the beginning of chapter 2 just opens up with posibilities.

There's also the contrast between Honeyfoot merely being affected in the moment he tries to explain, and Segundus having felt 'heavy and stupid' for the entire week in between meeting Norrell and meeting with the Society. I do love how clear it is already that Segundus is sensitive to magic, the way he noticed so clearly the magical lighting and direction-obfuscation in the last chapter, and now this.

"Other men may fondly attribute their lack of success to a fault in the world, rather than to their own poor scholarship." "But what is my reward for loving my art better than other men have done? For studying harder to perfect it?"

Ooooo burn! He's so catty. What an asshole (affectionate)! Not to say that the Society (and Foxcastle in particular) don't thoroughly deserve it, of course. Everyone in this room is so ready to be offended, they're actively looking for reasons. Their lives must be so incredibly boring that this is how they choose to entertain themselves, holy shit XD

Oh, god. This attorney guy. Robinson. He is so... He's something, alright. "He was so clean and healthy and pleased about everything that he positively shone, which is only to be expected in a fairy or an angel, but is somewhat disconcerting in an attorney." No kidding. And during the whole scene he's so... blandly inoffensive and faux-innocent and defferential that it puts my hackles right up. He is deeply unnerving to me.

'This would be only fair' he says, of a deeply unfair and rigged agreement designed solely to punish them. 'Then surely they would recognise magic when they saw it' he says, as if he's not perfectly aware that they've just been given an incentive to fucking lie about it. 'All your friends have done it' he says, as the only argument he can come up with to try and coerce Segundus into signing the agreement. (Once again, much respect to Segundus for not punching this guy in the face.)

Yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck. Creepy motherfucker.

I love the descriptions of scenery and environment in this book so much, they're so damn evocative:

"The very voices of York's citizens were altered by a white silence that swallowed up every sound." "The winter gloom was quite gone, and in its place was a fearful light; the winter sun reflected many times over by the snowy earth."

Oh. Hmm. I can't be sure, but I think this is the first time the narrator has inserted themself quite so blatantly into the narrative. Things have been couched as observations before, but I don't remember before this the narrator actually referring to themself, or directly addressing the reader, or positing an opinion of their own? (I may have to go back and listen to chapter 1 again to check...)

"brooding blue shadows of the cathedral's west face" "sailing magisterially around the corner like a fat black ship" "he had a strong thin face with something twisted in it like a tree root" More great description and more adjective-adjective-noun phrases.

And then we come to Segundus and Childermass's second first meeting. Again, I feel so bad for Segundus, having his mind and memory messed with like this, but, if you'll excuse me a moment, -shipper goggles on- Segundus still remembers him! "I've seen you... I can picture you! Oh, where?" Can't remember so much as taking down the books that so enthralled him in the library never mind reading them, but he remembers Childermass.

"He thought John Childermass very insolent." Aaaaa, that's my blorbo! He's so cheeky, I love him so much.

"Several looked about them before going inside, as if taking a last fond farewell of a world they were not quite sure of seeing again." And we end the chapter on yet another absolutely magnificent line. Not quite the almost-cliffhanger of the first chapter, but still extremely tantalising, baiting the reader with questions about what, exactly, is going to happen next.

Hmm. Since this one isn't quite as long as chapter 1, I think I'm going to stuff chapter 3 in here, too; try and condense things a little bit XD

Chapter 3 - The Stones of York (February 1807)

"The cold of a hundred winters seems to have been preserved in its stones and to seep out of them." I have been in old churches and this is entirely accurate. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the description in this book is really top tier. Simple, but incredibly evocative and poetic.

"Bells often went with magic, and in particular with the magic of those unearthly beings, fairies." More symbolism, and this one I know less about, but at the same time, it feels right in a way I can't actually explain. Just that the vibes, the atmosphere it creates of bells being this ominous sound associated with something dangerous.

That being said, on thinking about it, I find it very odd that bells are symbols of fairies in this book for two reasons. One is the way that humans often get referred to as 'Christians' as a whole (I remember this gets explained later as a consequence of fairies being bad at telling the difference between humans, I think?), and church bells are the most commonplace example of bells I can think of. So why, then, are bells so specifically associated with fairy magic when there's such a strong connection to the way the book talks about the people who are not fairies?

And also, one of the primary uses of bells, with more significance in the past but with the tradition continuing on to this day, is to tell the time. To put order and structure on the otherwise abstract passing of the day. Which is in direct contrast to everything else we've been told about magic so far. Magic thrives in the places that are not structured to suit humans. Trying to impose scientific reason on magic kills it.

...Okay, I am definitely reaching here, but it just occurred to me that the other primary use of bells is as a warning. I can think of a bunch of examples; ye olden ships and fire-engines, castles and forts and such. All used to say 'something is wrong, action must be taken to avoid disaster'. And that makes me wonder if the bells are less a product of the fairy magic and more, perhaps, some other magic acting as an alarm.

And the only person I can think who could have cast such a wide-reaching, long-lasting spell would be the Raven King. And wouldn't that make sense? Wouldn't a King want to have a warning that some other being is trying to abduct one of his people?

...I'm reaching, but I really like this theory actually. Even though we knew the Raven King had no compunctions about stealing his own subjects away himself. (I still think it fits, as a King would feel entitled to privileges that others would certainly not be permitted.)

Which is a whole 'nother thing I have thoughts on. It's very interesting that the second real bit of information we get about him (after the bit about him having 'only three' Kingdoms being mentioned in one of Norrell's books. I think that's the only time he's actually directly named before this?), is that despite being an Englishman, he has the fairy habit of abducting people to other lands. And that ballad about it!

"The priest was all too worldly, Though he prayed and rang his bell, The Raven King three candles lit, The priest said it was well."

What is this? What does it mean? It does answer a bit of my speculation about bells, I think - they're used as a warning/warding off it seems (given that it's paralleled with praying) - but then there's that bit about the Raven King lighting candles and this, presumably, causing the priest to say 'oh alright then, do carry on'? I'm gonna have to keep my eye out for any more candle symbolism as well, I think.

"This land is all too shallow, It is painted on the sky, And trembles like the wind-shook rain, When the Raven King goes by."

-shakes fist at the author- You weren't content giving me chills with your description in prose, now you're doing it in verse?! -weeps- God. God. I don't have words for how this makes me feel. I am going fucking feral. I want to print this song out so I can eat it. Fuck.

And it's followed up by the narrator absolutely roasting the Magicians of York, which is making me cackle far more than it probably should because I'm still high off that absolutely unnecessary bit of poetry.

I love the way the narrative builds up to the magic. We get the bells, and then a voice, and then what it's saying, and then another one, and then that it comes from a statue, and then the rest of them, and between all of it we get these elaborate descriptions of the magicians reactions and fears.

Going back a little bit. The tale of the girl with the ivy leaves in her hair. This coming in the very next chapter after we were told that magicians are associated with ivy I think can't be a coincidence. And I wonder if the girl being a magician might not be a part of why the stones care so much about her murder? Not that I think murder inside a cathedral is all that common, but I find it hard to believe it only happened once in over 500 years.

"Kings, even stone ones, dislike above all things to be made equal to others." Hmm. Given how many Kings we have this story, I have a feeling this is Significant.

The fact that the stone statues that were to be repaired flinched from the chisel is... Oof. The idea of stone having a concept of harm, enough to fear it, is wild. And it raises the question of how... aware of what they are the statues are. Obviously we have the examples of kings bickering and quarrelling because they do believe themselves to be kings. But are they aware that they are statues of kings, or do the truly believe themselves to be those kings? The first statue seems aware, talking about how 'no one saw but the stones', instead of 'I saw'.

And if they know that they're stones, then... what does it say that they're afraid of the very thing that created them in the first place? Or is the fear of being 'remade' into something different? Is it particular to that statue, and another might welcome the chance to transform?

...Apparently I am my father's child.

My dad: But what is it like to be a tree??? -overthinks it- Me: But what is it like to be a stone??? -overthinks it-

I love this conversation between Segundus and Childermass. Childermass is coming at the thing so side-ways and sneaky, and yet... he's so blatant about it? It's so obvious right from the very start that he's leading up to something, and then he just... waits for Segundus to offer, instead of actually just asking? It's such a weird approach to take.

Also, the fact that we get another of those lovely poetic descriptions of the snow and the clouds as Childermass is waiting really gives the sense of a long drawn-out silence, and I can't help but laugh at the idea of this bizarre little stand-off, these two men just... staring at each other in the snow.

-shipper goggles on- "Until all the world contained was the falling snow, the sea-green sky, the dim grey ghost of York Cathedral... and Childermass." Perhaps it's an aspect of the audiobook that doesn't come through quite as strongly in the text, but the weight put on that last? Putting him on the same level as these... rather ephemeral, magical things, the natural phenomena of the snow and the sky, and the 'ghost of York Cathedral'? As well as the contrast of these... pale, dim, ghostly things, to Childermass who's so often described as dark and ragged. Even without that description here, it makes his presence so stark against this hazy, light backdrop. (And all this implied to be from Segundus's persepective =3)

And then there's all those compliments Childermass pays Segundus once he's gotten what he wanted, too XD (Even if I do kind of get the sense that Childermass doesn't necessarily mean them entirely as compliments. I don't think he thinks very well of people who are too obliging, tbh.)

You know, this is very much my brain veering off into the wilds here, but the thing about Mr Honeyfoot pursuing the tale of the girl with the ivy leaves makes me think of... this idea I've had for a while, mostly inspired by a JSaMN fanfic, On the March, where Childermass 'wakes up' the Yorkshire moors, and the notion of how magic, which in this book is so tightly tied to nature and the wild, could so easily be affected by the location in which it's done.

And if a place like York Minster can be aware of what's going on even when magic isn't being done upon it... then are the stones aware of Mr Honeyfoots efforts on their behalf? Do they see, for whatever value of sight they possess, him fighting this battle for them, and does this earn him anything from them? Can a stone feel gratitude? Is there some reciprocity or good will there? Does Mr Honeyfoot forge a bond of some kind with, or win the favour of, the Stones of York Minster?

There's a fic in this somewhere. (Mr Honeyfoot gets into a disagreement inside the Minster, and a stone drops onto the head of his adversary. Crumbly old buildings, you know, someone ought to check and make sure it's not going to happen again!)

'The Last Magician in Yorkshire' Now there's a phrase you could build an entire other story around. Another quite powerful end to a chapter, though not quite as gripping as the last two.

Well, I'm glad these two were somewhat shorter than all my thoughts on chapter 1. And I'm now more than half way through this week's chapters. I hope I'll be able to get 4 and 5 done tomorrow (or later this evening, maybe, if I feel like it?)

[theinstagrahame]

Another month and a bit, got some more great games coming through! It's time for the indie/small press RPG mail call round-up!

Die - Bizarre Love Triangles: I generally love Rowan, Rook and Deckard's work, and really enjoyed the roughly half that I read of The Wicked and the Divine by Kieron Gillen. So, the original book was a match made in heaven for me. The promise of a Collectible Card Game adventure for it? Done. Sold. I'm there, and sign me up.

Inevitable: I think a lot of people had similar reactions when they pulled Inevitable out of its box: Whoa, this is big. The last few books have been closer in size to the middle row of books, but there's apparently too much ruined Western Arthuriana for one book to contain. Played this on a stream, it's good.

Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast: I honestly can't wait to dig into Yazeba's, because it seems like the kind of game we need more of. It's that Found Family experience, the whole character-based gameplay that people love, but also designed to really keep things fresh even on repeat playthroughs. I'm really curious to finally dig in.

Wickedness: This was offered as an Add-on to the Yazeba's Backerkit, and I was intrigued by the pitch: You and two other players form a coven, and you do queer witch stuff. It's a beautifully made book, and I've got a lot of friends who I think would dig it.

Songbirds 3e: I picked up an earlier edition of Songbirds in an Itch Charity Bundle, and was really intrigued by the game. Snow does amazing things with layout and vibes, and is a really excellent game designer. I really wanted that edition in hard copy, but never found it, so a third edition was an instant get.

Kids on Bikes 2e: I know KoB mostly through the Brits on Bikes podcast, and I really enjoyed the system. I love systems that make use of all the dice in interesting and fun ways, and I really couldn't wait to see what a new edition would look like.

Apocalypse Keys - Doomsday Delights: I've recently been reading the Hellboy comics, and thoroughly enjoying them. I also already have Apocalypse Keys, which does an incredible job of making the comic even more queer, so completing the set with the fun stretch goal books was kind of an obvious call.

The Wolf King's Son: Vincent and Meguey Baker make amazing games, including the engine that runs so many of the games I like. I've been following their recent series of zines, and this popped up in that feed. I haven't checked out Under Hollow Hills, but even based on what I've seen from this, it's a must-have.

Pitcrawler: Wizards are the 1%, and we Pitcrawlers, disposable adventurers, are here to rob from the rich. It ticks all my boxes, and it looks good doing it. The campaign also hit while I was about halfway through my Magnus Archives listen, so it was an instant back for me.

Outliers: Everything Sam Leigh makes slaps, so yeah. Weird corporate science horror? Solo adventures? Hell, even the Far Horizons Co-op association really got me.

Here we Used to Fly: Picked this up also because of @partyofonepod, who played a really beautiful and bittersweet episode with the creator. I have always been a little too anxious as an adult to consider breaking into an old theme park, but I definitely have my share of fun memories of them as a kid. I'm also starting to envision other games this would pair really well as an epilogue to, should I ever get back into the AP scene.

Another game has arrived in the mail since I started this, but that's gonna be next month's first game, I guess!

[firstofficerrose]

I just keep thinking about Camlann, and there are two scenarios that I come back to over and over.

Scenario the first: Lancelot. It's not a common name, but it's not totally unheard of either. Lancelot originates in the French romances, I believe, so he would have less power here than characters originating from the Welsh traditions. But Lancelot is genuinely one of my favorite characters in Arthuriana, he's such an absolute disaster mess of a man. He is constantly getting kidnapped and imprisoned, he is a dude in so much distress. He's an incredible fighter. He has (sometimes lengthy) periods of madness. He cannot achieve the grail. He has a thing with Guinevere, and I know that our Gwen is definitely falling for Morgan (which is excellent), but Lancelots are very well suited to pining as well... and there's versions of the story that could even be read as ace or demi, probably. He keeps getting tricked into sleeping with ladies he has no interest in, so you might even have space for Aro Lancelot. There would be power in a link to Guinevere, but I suspect that he could get away with leaning into fealty without romance, you know? Such a juicy space of stories to play with. Such a sopping wet guy. I want Perry and Gwaine having to team up to rescue this dude and having some excellent teeth-clenched teamwork. Do you see my vision here?

Corollary to Scenario the first: Galahad, for many of the same reasons. An even less common name, trickier to pull off, but Galahad being this even-more-incredible fighter might be neat. A lot of what Galahad does falls into the space of miracles, which might not work with Ella's stated intention to avoid living religious traditions, but Galahad is another really interesting character. Achieving the grail through the power of no fap. He's a late addition to the Arthurian stories, and therefore less powerful overall, but I think he would be interesting.

Corollary the second to Scenario the first: Elaine. There are *so* many Elaine's in the Arthurian stories, an Elaine could take almost any role she wanted and that versatility could be extremely useful.

Scenario the second: Robin Hood. This one is relatively easy, because a number of the names from the story (Robin, Marian/Marion, Alan, John, Will) are quite common. This story would be stronger in Nottingham, of course, but can you imagine having this little crew of archery anarchists on your side? It would be excellent. Robin is, in later versions, all about rebellion against a corrupt king or prince, which might give him and his Merry Men a fighting chance against Arthur and the Knights. I want to see it, it sounds great. Also, our group of main characters are casters, a Face, and close-quarters fighters, and in the interest of party composition, I would be happier if we had some longbowmen here. (I know about Perry's crossbow and the spear, but come on, Peredur is a knight in the Mabinogion. He - and therefore Perry - does swords and spears and lances really well, not crossbows.)

Bonus scenario: Pellinor and the Questing Beast. It's been a hot second since I've read Le Morte d' Arthur, but basically the first thing Arthur does after becoming king in that version of the story is run off and go on a quest chasing the Beast for a full year, relieving Pellinor of the quest. I have never heard of anyone named Pellinor outside of these stories, which tells me that he might work better as a monster. You have the Beast and the knight chasing him (Shūjūn mentioned things that looked like Knights and really, really weren't, it could work) as this monster that Arthur and maybe his Knights are all compelled to go chasing, and it gives our little group a break.

[cbk1000]

Hey, what are you into right now (movies, books, series)? Or even not right now, but in the past, outside of Merlin? I feel you have wicked taste, and I’m desperate for a new hyperfixation. Please, some recs if you have them!

Hey, anon! Sorry; I spaced on answering this.

I don't generally watch a lot of movies or TV shows, because I prefer reading. TV is generally for when I want to shut my brain off and just be entertained, so I wouldn't call a lot of what I do watch good. But if you haven't seen them yet, Our Flag Means Death and Sense8 are both really good shows. Both were pretty popular on tumblr at one point or another, so you may have already seen them, but if not, I really recommend giving them a go. Also, this is dated now, but it still holds up as a sitcom: I've spent most of my recovery rewatching Frasier, which I saw as a kid when it was first airing in the 90s. Ditto Third Rock from the Sun, which still makes me laugh, no matter how many times I've seen it.

This is a video game, but I've been playing an RPG set in medieval Bohemia that's really scratching my nerd itch; it's called Kingdom Come. It's very immersive and has been keeping me company the last couple of weeks while I get to the point in my recovery where I feel well enough to do more than lay in bed staring at my tablet, but am not quite yet a fully functioning human.

As for books, I'm finishing up a historical mystery series, 'Brother Cadfael' by Ellis Peters, set in medieval England during The Anarchy. I've thoroughly enjoyed it and am sad to have only one book left.

I just started rereading 'The Wolf Hall' trilogy by Hilary Mantel, which follows the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell during Henry VIII's reign. I found the trilogy very gripping and difficult to put down my first time through, and though I've only just started the first book again, it's having the same effect, even though I just read it a couple of years ago. Definitely check out a preview of this first, though; I love Mantel's unique style, but I know a lot of readers find it difficult.

I read 'Shadowplay' by Joseph O'Connor a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it. This follows Bram Stoker during his time as a manager at a London theatre, his struggles with his writing (he didn't really find commercial success until after his death), and the experiences that led to 'Dracula.'

For the last couple of years I've been making my way through most of Guy Gavriel Kay's work, which I recommend if you like poetic, historically-inspired fantasy. I started with 'A Brightness Long Ago', but I recommend picking whatever time period that interests you personally (the Sarantine duology, for instance, is set in an analogue of the Byzantine Empire; 'A Brightness Long Ago' evokes Renaissance Italy, and then 'Under Heaven' and its companion 'River of Stars' imperial China).

Ditto with Terry Pratchett and his Discworld, a hilarious satirical fantasy series. I started with 'Guards Guards' and read the City Watch books and then moved on to the books featuring the witches. Special shout-out to his 'Nation', which is not a Discworld book, but is one of the best novels I've read in years.

I've also been immersed in Arthurian literature and heaps of non-fiction about the Plantagenet reign for the last few years. My favourite work of Arthuriana is probably 'Idylls of the King' by Tennyson. It's gorgeous and haunting. 'The Plantagenets' by Dan Jones is a good, accessible introduction to that period of history if you're at all inclined to non-fiction. He's a historian, but it's not a stodgy, academic text.

I hope there's something here for you!